U.S. troops march during a ceremony in Baghdad, Dec. 15, 2011, that marked the end of Operation New Dawn.
(U.S. Air Force/Master Sgt. Cecilio Ricardo)
I was 20 years old when bombs burst over Baghdad in a "shock and awe" campaign that unfolded on television like a fireworks display in hell. Now I'm closer to 30, and I am reading in newspapers about the "quiet" end to a conflict that had shattered hundreds of thousands of lives and siphoned over $800 billion from our nation's treasury.
The flag ceremony that took place in Baghdad this week was solemn. Quiet. But just because there's no fire-lit night sky and crackling of weapons in the air doesn't mean that there's no shock and awe this time around.
Almost exactly five years ago, back when I naively believed like so many that we were closer to the end rather than the middle of the war, I wrote about how American soliders were being kept in Iraq to send a message:
President George W. Bush addresses the nation
from the Oval Office at the White House
Wednesday evening, March 19, 2003.
(White House/Paul Morse)
If any "victory" was to be declared in this misbegotten war, it was to be declared when Saddam Hussein's regime was ousted. Since then, as a "liberating" force morphed into an occupying force, the concept of "victory" has become harder and harder to define, as one does not "win" or "lose" an occupation, nor another nation's civil war.
Despite this reality, like the citizens of Marathon, the president has dispatched his own messengers to push a message of victory. On their first, second, and even third tours of duty, some 140,000 of them march on in Iraq, with the mission of eventually conveying the president's message to the world.
Pre-emptive war pays. And George W. Bush is mighty democracy-warrior. Not a failure. That is the message. That is the mission.
Foolishly, writing back in 2006, I thought that the George Bush would declare victory before the end of his term:
Somewhere down the line, though, at a time when conditions on the ground can be manipulated in such a way as to save face, the president will define "victory" in such a way as to encompass his failures. "Victory" may be another purple-finger election (nevermind that the new government may be more radical than the old), or a lull in the violence (fewer bodies for now, that is). But the time will come when this president shall survey the situation and decided that, finally, he can give life to the myth of "victory."
And at that moment, the messengers in Iraq will have served their purpose. Their course will end. They will come home. In coffins or in collapsed exhaustion, they will come home.
Message delivered and mission complete. Sacrifice made and face saved. Behold..."victory." Pyrrhic and belated, borne on the broken backs of her messengers, reeking of ego, folly, and blood.
"Conditions on the ground" (read: failure and civil war) prevented Bush from being able to proclaim "mission accomplished" ... again. So this thing, this hideous conflict birthed on live TV with a bang and having grown into a misshapen and uncontrollable farce, was handed over to a senator turned president who once proclaimed that he was opposed to a "dumb" and "rash" war launched by "armchair, weekend warriors in [the Bush] administration to shove their own ideological agendas down our throats, irrespective of the costs in lives lost and in hardships borne."
The White House has published an
Iraq Timeline
which includes an overview of the administration's
actions to help a new generation of veterns.
President Obama made a promise to end our military presence in Iraq. He has delivered on that promise, perhaps too slowly for many like me who opposed the war from the start, and definitely too slowly for those families who lost sons and daughters and mothers and fathers since the president took office. But Operation Iraqi Freedom turned into Operation New Dawn. That turned into tens of thousands of troops being able to come home to their families, and that—for the president at least—can indeed be called a solemn victory.
As the war summaries are published this week, the waves of shock and awe hit again, this time here at home.
No matter how closely you've followed the statistics, it is shocking to learn that the conflict is projected to cost $1 trillion. A trillion thefts, as Eisenhower would have said, "from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed."
It is shocking this week to read the numbers that I stopped reading daily long ago. Nearly 4,500 troops killed. Over 32,000 wounded. A low estimate of over 100,000 Iraqi deaths.
As the war draws to a close, these images as just as shocking as the ones we saw when the war opened with all its horrific, bomb-blasted glory:
With shock comes awe. When I read about the courage that OIF veterans are showing, it feels me with an awe a hundred times more powerful than that I felt in March 2003. Like Andrew Kinard, who lost his legs and went on to compete in the Boston Marathon. Or Brendan Marrocco, the only quadruple amputee veteran of either OIF or OEF, who lives a life of valor every day. Or Ryan Kules, a double amputee who celebrates his "Alive Day" on the anniversary of the attack in Iraq that almost took his life. Or the countless Iraq War veterans who live daily with the emotional and mental scars of the war. Their resilience and strength are awe-inspiring, indeed.
It was a foolish, reckless, misconceived and ill-executed endeavor. In its start and in its finish, in its shock and in its awe, it reminds of what John Adams wrote: "Great is the guilt of an unnecessary war." The actual cost to country and families, however, is much greater.